Isaac Chotiner speaks with Maha Yahya, of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center, about what Israel hopes to achieve with its bombing campaign in Lebanon.
To better understand this part of the widening Middle East conflict, I recently spoke by phone with Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East Center, who lives in Lebanon and was in Beirut when we talked.
During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the roots of Lebanon’s long political crisis, how Israel’s war in Gaza changed Lebanese society, and what Israel really hopes to achieve with its bombing campaign in Lebanon. Can you describe the political situation in Lebanon leading up to the October 7th attacks? Because the period after that is when Israel has been especially aggressive in Lebanon, at least in recent years. God, it feels like a lifetime ago, honestly. I think the situation prior to October 7th was pretty much status quo, both internally, within the country, but also in the country’s relationship with Israel. The last war between Israel and Lebanon was in 2006. The cessation of hostilities, or ceasefire, that was put in place at the end of that conflict was holding. There was very little interaction along the border. In 2022, an agreement was struck between Lebanon and Israel to finalize the delineation of our maritime borders. And, as for the land borders, some of the disputed points had been resolved. Internally, in Lebanon, there was a power struggle between the various political parties. Hezbollah still had quite a bit of political power. They were the central political power, in many ways. And then you had the Lebanese government forces on the other side, who were basically the heads of various militias during the Lebanese civil war who had simply moved from the street into government at the end of hostilities, in 1989. There had been growing resentment of that political class within Lebanon, especially after a series of protest movements in 2019, when the country seemed to be facing economic collapse. And the protests were about how grossly the country was being mismanaged, but also that a majority of Lebanese people, across all sectarian groups, were fed up. So that movement against Lebanon’s political status quo had quite a bit of momentum, but it was derailed. One of the reasons why it was derailed was something that took a lot of us by surprise but shouldn’t have, which was how fast Hezbollah came to the fore to defend the system. It derailed the protest movement within weeks. I remember those protests as such a moment of hope. People were energized like I’ve never seen before. Did Hezbollah dislike the protest movement because the fractured nature of Lebanese politics gave them a way of wielding de-facto power? It was that—the extent to which they were invested in the system as is. The division of power between six political leaders from different sectarian backgrounds gave them outsized political power. Of course, the arms also gave them power within that system. So, on the one hand, part of Hezbollah’s discourse is a commitment to anti-corruption, et cetera. None of this has ever happened, and at the same time they were very invested in making sure that the demonstrations quickly diminished. And then COVID came, and then the catastrophic Beirut port explosion that derailed the process as well. So how would you describe the period from October 7th until early March of this year? What changed? In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Hezbollah made the decision to support Gaza by waging a low-intensity conflict on Israel’s northern borders. That opened the door for Israel. And I think this is where Hezbollah completely misread the situation. I don’t think many of us, frankly, understood the extent to which that created a shock within the system in Israel and within a society that already was veering to the right. So we saw an escalation. Israel was hitting deeper into Lebanon. And there were assassinations. And the response from Hezbollah was, We will respond at the time of our own choosing. They thought that, by maintaining a measured response to what Israel was doing, they could stave off a broader attack. But that did not work. And we saw that it did not work in September, 2024, when Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated, and there were these pager attacks on Hezbollah officials. This was interesting logistically, but it was also a terror operation. When you have pagers going off in public markets, in supermarkets, in pediatric offices, with children holding these pagers, the danger to civilians is quite significant. You also have other countries, led by the United States, pressuring the central government of Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. Did that not happen because of a lack of will on the part of the central government, or because it did not have the power to do so? In terms of the relationship between Hezbollah and the central government, it was a very, very tenuous one, particularly after Nasrallah made the decision to join the fray and attack Israel, and then immediately afterward we had the war, which was followed by a cessation of hostilities, during which Hezbollah asked the speaker of parliament and the central government to basically negotiate with Israel on their behalf. And we ended up with a cessation of hostilities that was not to Hezbollah’s advantage. And, by then, Hezbollah really had been significantly weakened. What we do know is that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps , by then, had gone from being macromanagers to something else. They had been involved at the macro level in managing Hezbollah. There was an I.R.G.C. member on the seven-member Shura Council of Hezbollah. After Nasrallah was killed, and the war had started, I.R.G.C. members were on the ground and helping lead the battles, if you like. And over the past year, they’ve been helping reformulate and reorganize the military arm of Hezbollah. So, Hezbollah’s weakening by Israel led to more direct Iranian control? Yes, they became a lot more hands-on with Hezbollah’s military operations. But then there were elections. And, in early 2025, we had a new President, and then there was the selection of a new Prime Minister and the new government. And this was a turning point. You had the election of a former Army chief as President, and then a Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, who is not from the traditional political élite. His family is well known. It’s a traditional political family, but he himself worked outside Lebanon as the president of the International Court of Justice, and comes from a legal background, and doesn’t have any business dealings with any of the political parties here. In terms of Hezbollah, there was international pressure, but there was also domestic pressure. People assume that the demand for the state to mobilize and to take full authority over arms in the country from Hezbollah is simply an international request. It’s not. That desire has been building up within Lebanon among very different population groups, including the other political parties. Hezbollah, for the longest time, was strong-arming other parties, and they are accused of assassinating a former Prime Minister. And there was one other thing: on December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell, and control of Syria changed hands. That also undermined Hezbollah significantly because the route via Syria for Iran to send weapons was no longer there or had become a lot more difficult to use. Iran had to pull out of Syria, having invested billions of dollars there. So pressure against Hezbollah was growing internally and externally, and the government did things that were not well enough appreciated. There is a very delicate balance within Lebanon. You’ve got eighteen officially recognized sectarian communities, and most of the political parties represent these communities directly. But there was a seismic shift in the mind-set and in the approach of the Lebanese government toward Hezbollah. It was very clear in the decision of the cabinet to declare a state monopoly over arms on August 5, 2025. And then, in September, the Army chief made a plan to clear out all Hezbollah arms from south of the Litani River. That was phase one, and it was verified internationally. The Army had operational control south of the Litani. Further proof is that, if you look at the location of the rockets that are going to Israel now, most of them, very few are coming from south of the Litani. The criticism was that the Army was not moving fast enough. They should have been a lot more aggressive. There were requests from Israel. And the government’s response was, Look, Lebanon is doing what it can. You need to show that diplomacy works. You’re occupying five points in Lebanon. Why don’t you withdraw from one? Why don’t you declare a unilateral cessation of hostilities for a period of twenty days? Because let’s not forget that, since the ceasefire in November, 2024, until just before this war started, the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was unilateral. Israel was continuing its bombing campaigns targeting members of Hezbollah, but many Lebanese civilians’ lives were also lost in the process. And that’s part of the logic that Hezbollah is using today, saying, Look, we didn’t respond to Israel’s attacks for a year and a half. And now we’re in a position where we knew that they were preparing to attack us, so we preëmpted it. But I still think the Hezbollah decision to launch rockets after the Iran war started was foolish, and it dragged the country into a genuine abyss. Hezbollah started firing rockets after the attack on Iran began, and it seems Israel was probably planning to use this as a pretext to start this massive campaign in Lebanon. What have you been able to tell from Israel’s choice of targets so far about what they may be trying to accomplish here? I think, frankly, if Israel were interested in weakening Hezbollah further, they would have engaged diplomatically with the government. There were plenty of offers before all of this started. This could have been avoided because the Lebanese government had made a commitment that, should any rockets be fired by Hezbollah, the Army would apprehend and stop it. But Israel started responding immediately. So this was prepared. Israel was intending to come in. We’d been hearing about this for ages, that they were preparing for a ground invasion. There’s an element of targeted punishment of the Shia community, because it’s mostly their areas that are being hit by Israel for having supported or elected Hezbollah. But I can tell you that, when the war started, there was significant anger at Hezbollah for dragging us into this, but now some are rallying back around them, partly because of the brutality of the bombardment. Many people are not happy with Hezbollah, but they feel that now is not the time to criticize. Do you have faith that the Lebanese government would’ve acted against Hezbollah if Israel hadn’t attacked so quickly? I think the Army would’ve gone after those who fired at Israel. Definitely. The political will to prevent Hezbollah from attacking Israel is there. The next steps are a lot more challenging. Disarming and decommissioning Hezbollah requires a very strong army to be able to go in and find weapons depots and arrest people. To do that in a country where the sectarian balance is very delicate, you need to have at least one part of the Shia community politically supporting you. And what is very interesting for me is, when the government, after Hezbollah opened this front, held an emergency meeting, the Council of Ministers made the decision to consider Hezbollah’s military activities illegal and therefore prosecutable by law, to stop the visa-free arrangements between Lebanon and Iran, and to expel any I.R.G.C. members that are found in the country. That’s a seismic shift in the mentality. These are things we never thought we would see happen in a country like Lebanon, because going after Hezbollah, an armed group that represents at least part of the Shia community, could trigger civil strife. But three of the five Shia ministers did not protest this decision. The President has also offered direct talks with Israel. The Israelis have said no, correct? Yeah, I don’t think Iran or Israel wants to stop the war in Lebanon. So, just to go back, then, to my question from before, what is it that you think Israel’s trying to accomplish here? And can you tell anything about their aims from the targets they’ve chosen to hit? I think they’re trying to do a number of things. One, as I said, is a collective punishment for the Shia community. And we see this in many of the areas that are being targeted, because some of them include blanket-bombing the southern suburbs of Beirut. These are residential buildings. It’s not like the entire southern suburbs is one big arms depot. So many of these areas that are being targeted are really about broader collective punishment. The second thing they’re trying to do is spread a sense of fear and paranoia, which they’re succeeding at in Lebanon. By directly targeting individuals, especially when they’re in apartment buildings and in hotels, you place a bull’s-eye on every member of the Shia community. People are scared to take them in. There’s a lot of concern about having displaced people around you. It’s really an environment of paranoia and fear that we saw glimpses of in 2024. The Lebanese, as you know, I mean, they’re very hospitable when there’s a problem—they all jump in. When I think back to 2006, N.G.O.s opened their doors. Everyone was trying to help. This time, it’s a lot more muted. And then the third thing is, now it looks like Israel is looking to occupy a very large part of south Lebanon. It’s not just to the Litani. We have to wait and see where this is going to end. Will they ultimately withdraw back to the border, or are they trying to renegotiate everything again? Because you had the minister of energy in Israel two days ago say, We should reconsider the maritime borders as well, the ones that were agreed to. Are they trying to maintain what they call a buffer zone, and I call occupied Lebanese territory, where you already have thirty-seven villages that have been completely vaporized, and therefore no one would be able to go back? So it’s just not clear to me where the Israeli government wants to go with this. They must want to negotiate from a position of strength, but they already have that. They have complete control over our skies. But this mass expulsion of people will create tensions within Lebanon. Already, there are many tensions on the ground, and it’s going to create even greater tensions down the road. And this is why, again, the Army’s being very careful in trying to demobilize or decommission certain areas, because you can trigger these tensions at any moment. No problem if you don’t feel like answering this question, but what has life been like for you recently? Look, it’s been exhausting. It’s emotionally . . . It’s very difficult, partly because you’re seeing your country being ripped apart, and there’s a sense of helplessness. I’m in a domain where we’re supposed to be looking for creative solutions and off-ramps and thinking of all of this, but it’s very difficult to see an off-ramp in this environment, where we’re just on an escalatory path on the way to nowhere. This country is literally trapped. You have Israel on one side, Iran on the other. So, for me, it’s been very, very difficult to see all of this play out, and then you have to do stuff while you are being professional, unemotional. It’s very hard. And there’s the personal side also, where, I mean, my father’s buried in an area that I no longer can go to. So there’s a sense of . . . I get emotional about this because I’m having a hard time processing this. ♦
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